when Storm was divorced. It was all too much, even for a man like Sean.
Mark stared at her. Storm is divorced? he asked softly.
Yes, Ruth nodded, and then her expression lightened. Oh Mark, I know you and Storm were becoming such good friends. I am sure she is fond of you. Can't you go to her? it might be the cure for which we all pray. Umhlanga Rocks was one of those little seaside villages that were scattered along the sandy coast line on each side of the main port of Durban. Mark crossed the low bridge over the Umgeni River, and headed north.
The road cut through the thick jungly coastal bush, dense as an equatorial forest, and hung with ropes of hanas from which the little blue vervet monkeys swung and chattered.
The road ran parallel with the white beaches, but at the twelfth milestone Mark reached the turn-off and went directly down to the coast.
The village was clustered around the iron-roofed Oyster Box Hotel where Mark and Dicky Lancome had danced and dined with Marion and that other nameless girl so long ago.
The only other buildings were twenty or thirty cottages set in large gardens, over-run by the rampant jungle, and overlooking the sea with its rowdy frothing surf and rocky points jutting out from the smooth white beaches.
Ruth had given him accurate directions andMark parked the motorcycle on the narrow dusty lane and followed the pathway that wound without apparent direction through a wild garden of purple bougainvillaea and brilliant poinsettia.
The cottage was small, and the bougainvillaea had climbed up the pillars of the veranda and spread in brilliant, almost blinding display across the thatched roof.
Mark knew at once that he had the right place, for Storm's Cadillac was parked in the open under the trees.
It looked neglected and in careless disrepair. The tread was worn from the tyres, there was a long deep scratch down one side. A side window was cracked, and the paintwork was dull with dust and splattered with the dung of the fruit bats hanging in the tree above.
Mark stopped and stared at the Cadillac for a full minute.
The Storm he had known would have stamped her foot and screamed for her father if anybody had tried to make her ride in that.
Mark climbed the veranda steps, and paused to look about him. It was a peaceful and lovely spot, such as an artist might choose, but in its remoteness and its neglected and untrimmed profusion hardly suitable for one of the elegant young ornaments of society.
Mark knocked on the front door, and heard somebody moving about inside for some minutes before the door was opened.
Storm was more beautiful by far than he had remembered. Her hair was long and bleached at the ends by salt water and sun. Her feet were bare, her arms and legs were tanned and slim and supple as ever, but it was her face that had changed.
Although she wore no cosmetics, the skin had the shine of vibrant youth like the lustre inside a sea shell, and her eyes were clear and bright with health, yet there were new depths to them, the petulant set of her mouth had softened, her arrogance had become dignity.
in that moment as they stared at each other he knew that she had indeed grown from girl to woman in the time since he had last seen her. And he sensed that the process had been agonizing, but that from it all was emerging a new value, a new strength, and the love which had been in him all this time spread out to fill his soul. Storm, he said, and her eyes opened wide as she stared at him. You! Her voice was a little cry of pain, and she tried to drag the door closed.
Mark jumped forward and held it. Storm, I must speak with you.
She tugged desperately at the door handle. Go away, Mark. Please go away. All the new dignity and poise seemed to crumble and she looked at him with the wide frightened eyes of a child waking from nightmare.
At last she knew that she could not force the door against his strength, and she turned away and walked slowly back into the house. You shouldn't have come, she said miserably, and the child seemed to sense the changed air. It squalled. Oh hush, baby, Storm called softly, but her voice goaded it into a fresh outburst, and she crossed the room on bare feet with the long veil of hair hanging down her back.
The room was starkly furnished, the cement floor bare and cool, no rugs to soften them, but along the walls were stacked her canvases, many of them blank, but others half-finished, or completed, and the familiar evocative smell of turpentine was heavy and pungent.
The child lay belly down on a kaross of monkey skins laid out on the cement floor. Legs and arms were spread in that froglike baby attitude, and except for a towelling napkin around the hips, it was naked and suntanned. The head was thrown back angrily, and the face flushed with the force of its yells.
Mark stepped into the room, and stared with sickly fascination at the child. He knew nothing of babies, but he could see that this was a sturdy and aggressively healthy small animal. The limbs were strong, kicking and working with a violent swimming motion, and the back was broad and robust. Hush now, darling, cooed Storm, she knelt beside him, and lifted him under the armpits. The napkin slid down to the child's knees and there was no doubting that he was a boy. His tiny penis stuck out at half mast, like a white finger with its little floppy chef's cap of loose wrinkled skin.
Mark found himself hating this Other man's child, with a sudden frightening hatred. Yet he went forward involuntarily to where Storm knelt with the baby in her lap.
Mother's touch had quelled the shouts of anger, and now the boy was smacking his lips and making little anticipatory hunger grants and pawing demandingly at Storm's bosom.
The child had a fine golden cap of hair, through which Mark could see the perfect round of his skull and the little blue veins under the almost translucent skin. Now that the furious crimson tide of anger had receded from his face, Mark saw how beautiful was the child, as beautiful as the mother, and he hated it, he hated it with a bitter sickening feeling in his stomach, and a corrosive taste in his mouth.
He moved closer, watching Storm wipe a dribble of saliva from the child's chin and hoist up his napkin to his
